Knowledge Spillover Entrepreneurship

Abstract

Just as the economy has been besieged by a wave of technological changethat has left virtually no sector of the economy untouched, scientificunderstanding of the innovative process—that is, the manner by whichfirms innovate, and the impact such technological change has on enterprisesand markets—has also undergone a revolution, which, although somewhatquieter, has been no less fundamental. Well into the 1970s, a conventionalwisdom about the nature of technological change generally pervaded.This conventional wisdom had been shaped largely by scholars suchas Alfred Chandler (1977), Joseph Schumpeter (1942), and John KennethGalbraith (1956) who convinced a generation of scholars and policymakersthat innovation and technological change lay in the domain of largecorporations and that small business would fade away as the victimof its own inefficiencies.